From 10 to 12 April, Duke University, in collaboration with the Holberg Prize, will host a conference on Fredric Jameson and critical theory. The event features Holberg Laureates Achille Mbembe and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak as keynote speakers.
Fredric Jameson (1934–2024) insisted on “imagining a future which might be radically and constitutionally other.” The urgency of this task rested on his understanding of Critical Theory “as a way of keeping the negative alive in a period in which praxis, the unity of the negative and the positive, itself seems suspended.”
Over the years, Critical Theory has received scholarly and popular attention; it has simultaneously been pronounced dead and an enduring threat.
The conference is a three‑day celebration of Fredric Jameson’s scholarship, exploring the future of critical theory. In addition to revisiting Jameson’s 2008 Holberg Lecture, the conference features a conversation between Achille Mbembe and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who received the Holberg Prize in 2024 and 2025 respectively.
More information is available on Duke University’s website.
Video from the conference will be made available. Jameson’s 2008 Holberg Lecture, which was part of the Holberg Symposium that year, can be viewed here.
